ABSTRACT
On October 16, 1998, Judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain’s national criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, filed a request in a London court for the arrest of former Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, who was undergoing back surgery in a local clinic.3 Invoking universal jurisdiction, Garzón sought the extradition of Chile’s former head of state from Britain to Spain on charges of ordering the murder and torture of Spanish citizens during his presidency, as well as a more general conspiracy to commit torture, murder, and hostage taking. The seventeen-month saga that followed thrust Garzón into the international spotlight, and he became a hero for the international human rights community. His intervention in the Pinochet case marked a watershed moment in the prosecution of past human rights abuses in Chile (Pion-Berlin 2004; Collins 2010; Requa 2012), and in the years that followed, Garzón remained at the forefront of efforts to bring international criminals to justice. For example, in 2005, he won the extradition of Argentine ex-naval officer Adolfo Scilingo to Spain, where he was tried and convicted for crimes against humanity and sentenced to 640 years in prison.4 In April 2009, he launched an investigation into systematic torture by U.S. officials at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base.5 For his zealous pursuit of justice in international human rights cases, Garzón soon became known as “el juez estrella,”—in English, “the star judge.”
